OPERATOR MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH AND OGBAH

HENRY OBURU ONYEDIBIA
Abstract
The nuances of syntactic parameters as they concern Operators movement in the syntactic
constructs of English and Ogbah are the exploits of this paper. The paper impliedly reflected a
universal implication for languages in the polarities of the two divides. It attempted an
examination of the movements of Operators within a clause structure and the resultant effects for
the focuslanguages. In a multiple wh-words within a single clause structure, the paper discovered
that for Ogbah, the Superiority Condition is permissible for English as an economy requirement
for shortest move, but could be violated in Ogbah because of the demolition of Islands by the
introduction of some relevant clitics in the syntax. The same consequence is also obtained in the
Compl-non-ComplAsymmetry.
Keywords:Asymmetry ,Operator, Movement,, parameters, Specifier, Wh-word.
Introduction
Ogbah language is a language among the group of the New Benue-Congo languages. The
grammatical concept of ‘operator’ is conceived in the parlance of traditional grammar as any
variety of the auxiliary verbs in English language. Tomori (1977:155) noted thus: “Operator’
(‘traditional auxiliary verb’)…can be listed as follows: need, dare, could am/are/is/was/were+to,
ought+to. As in the case of the lexical verbs, these operators can be classified according to
different systems within the same function”. This idea of the ‘operator’ as held and used above by
Tomori differsfrom the one we are about to consider in this paper. In the parlance of grammatical
movement, an operator is regarded as the specified language unit which carries the notion of
negation or interrogative, and inclusive in a phrase that is the subject or complement of a verb.
This accounts for why operator bearing expressions at the D-structure level (i.e. at pre-question
construction) occur adjacently at the periphery ofthe finite verb.
Why an Operator Moves
One of the important qualifications of the architecture of human language is creativity.
The ability to create and recreate language is a basic necessity for the enablement of linguistic
consequentials. Without this creative and recreative blueprint, human language communication
would be piece-mealed, uninteresting and likely not encode the conceptional intent of the speaker.
On the other hand, the listener would be encumbered with the problems ofintelligible decodement
ofthe linguistic transmission.The most efficient model forstemming this challenge is Movement.
Until the contribution of Chomsky (1957) in the sphere of the syntax of human language, it was
not obvious as the role of Movement in language creation and sustainability. Jackendoff posits
that the motivative factor which inspired Chomky’s Syntactic Structure was the human
uninpedable ability to create expressions of human communication. He empathically noted that:
“In order for speakers of a language to create and understand sentences they have never heard
before, there must be a way to combine some finite number of memorized units-the words or
Henry Oburu Onyedibia, School of Languages, Department of English Education, Federal
College ofEducation (Technical) Omoku,Rivers State…

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